AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews Rosa, second from right, an undocumented immigrant who wants her family's last name withheld, is surrounded by her son Edgar, far right, daughter Olga, far left, and grandson Logan at their home in New York T his article appears in the Summer 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here . W hether it’s being ripped from their parents at the border or being forcibly withheld from joining their relatives in the United States, undocumented children have become casualties in the Republican crusade against immigrants deemed undesirable. The Republican Tax Act is the newest assault. The new tax bill increases the Child Tax Credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child under age 17 for U.S. citizens, but denies the credit to immigrant children without a valid Social Security number. The bill’s authors estimate that the provision will save more than $20 billion over the next ten years—an indirect transfer from poor immigrants to the wealthy, the primary...

Charles Russo Frank Mills in 2026, the propaganda bar for the No campaign trickle-downers_54.jpg T he “2026” pop-up bar occupies the basement of a two-story building in Washington’s trendy Dupont Circle neighborhood, where young professionals observe the tradition of the weekly happy hour with near-religious fervor. Upstairs, the parent bar, Rebellion, brims with the usual sounds of glasses clinking and laughter. Head to lower level, though, and you’ll feel like you’ve stepped into Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks painting, reimagined for a new age. The dimly lit and almost-empty bar stretches to the end of the room. Two servers sit idle on their smartphones while the bartender finds ways to keep busy. This not-so-happy hour is dolorous by design, part of a campaign by restaurant owners to depict a ballot measure, known as Initiative 77 , as a threat to their workers. The measure will come before voters in the city’s primary elections on June 19. The initiative would gradually phase out the...

(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson) Former Governor Eric Greitens speaks on January 29, 2018, in Palmyra, Missouri. trickle-downers_54.jpg I n the waning hours of his tenure as governor of Missouri, Eric Greitens delivered on his campaign pledge to kneecap the state’s labor unions. A former up-and-comer in the Republican Party, Greitens’s star quickly dimmed after allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced and a felony charge of invasion of privacy and a charge of potential campaign-finance violations followed. Under the threat of impeachment proceedings in the state legislature, Greitens announced his resignation right after Memorial Day, giving himself until the end of that week to tie up loose ends on his way out the door. And tie them up, he did. Greitens signed a staggering 77 bills into law before handing the reins over to Mike Parson, his lieutenant governor. One of those bills was H.B. 1413 , which would require unionized government employees to vote every three years on whether they want...

AP Photo/Teresa Crawford Solo Littlejohn, a fast food worker from Cicero, Illinois, joins a 2016 Fight for 15 protest in Chicago trickle-downers_35.jpg S hortly before the company’s annual shareholder meeting last week, more than 100 cooks and cashiers rallied in the rain outside McDonald’s new headquarters in Chicago’s West Loop to demand higher wages. In recent years, the meeting has attracted demonstrations organized by the union-backed Fight for 15 movement. But in 2018, a new grievance appeared on the roster of complaints against one of the world’s largest fast-food chains: sexual harassment. With the help of Fight for 15, ten current and former female McDonald’s employees in nine different cities have taken legal action against the company over alleged instances of harassment by employees and managers. Most shareholders appeared largely indifferent to the unrest. The topics of pay and harassment did not appear on the group’s agenda, which included elections to the board of...

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin The Office of Personnel Management in Washington W hat better way to kick off Public Service Recognition Week than a proposal to cut retirement benefits for current and former federal employees? Before the start of the annual celebration during the first full week of May, Office of Personnel Management Director Jeff Pon sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan outlining the administration’s proposals to cut monthly retirement income for all future federal retirees and to require employees to fund a larger portion of their retirement. The proposals, which mirror requests made in the White House’s fiscal year 2018 budget, are sure further strain to an already frayed relationship between the Trump administration and federal workers. The requested changes would reduce cost-of-living adjustments for current retirees in the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), which provides retirement benefits for most federal workers hired before 1984. Such adjustments would...